The Amulet of Power - Mike Resnick [65]
It was less than a minute later that Hassam unlocked the door to the suite and entered the parlor.
“Ismail himself has gone for the books,” he announced. “He should be back within an hour.”
“Good.” She walked to a sofa and sat down. “I’m going to be hungry in another hour or two . . . and I’ve lost my faith in this hotel’s room service. Why don’t we go back to that restaurant we had a drink at earlier? It looked good.”
Hassam’s face lit up. “You mean the Al Bustan?”
“That’s the one.”
“Then that is where we shall go—if Omar approves.”
“Contrary to what he believes, Omar doesn’t run my life,” said Lara bluntly. “He can eat where he wants. I’m going to the Al Bustan.”
“Good choice,” said Mason, entering and walking into the parlor. “I’ve eaten there before. Try the grilled chicken.”
“Kevin!” she exclaimed, walking over and hugging him. “I didn’t even hear the door open.”
“I’m getting better at all this cloak-and-dagger stuff,” he said, not without a trace of pride. “Did you have any luck at the library?”
“I’m still alive,” she said. “Some might say that was a stroke of luck.”
“There was another attack?”
“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” replied Lara. “How about you—did you get the information you were after?”
“They were Mahdists, all right,” he confirmed. “And working on their own. My source says that if they’d succeeded, their own people would have killed them. They want you watched, not murdered or even hindered.” He checked his wristwatch. “When do you expect Omar back?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, if there’s any other place you want to go today . . .”
“I’ve got to stay here,” she said. “I’m waiting for Ismail.”
“Who’s Ismail?”
“A friend,” replied Lara. “I sent him to the library to pick up some books.”
He frowned. “I thought you just came from the library?”
“I left in rather a hurry.”
“What did you ask him to bring you?”
“Books on Gordon,” she answered.
“Any titles in particular?”
“No. I just need to know more about him, to learn how his mind worked. I know he was a brilliant general, and I know he was almost fanatically religious, but that’s hardly enough to go on. I’ve got to put myself in his shoes. He’s got the Amulet, and the Mahdi has declared a sixty-day cease-fire. He doesn’t know for a fact that the city can hold out for the ten months that it did; it might fall in two months, or six weeks, or the day the cease-fire ends. He’s got to hide the Amulet soon. He knows he’s being watched, so he sends Colonel Stewart all the way to Edfu as a decoy. Now what does he do next?”
“He hides it, of course,” said Mason. “And he’s got to hide it within the city limits.”
“Not necessarily.”
“But he turned the city into an island,” noted Mason. “He couldn’t leave it.”
“He didn’t flood the ditch and isolate the city until a month before the siege began,” said Lara. “I learned that much at the National Museum this morning. So he had thirty days in which to get it out of Khartoum.”
“I don’t think so,” said Mason. “He was the most recognizable man in the Sudan, probably even including the Mahdi. There’s no way he could have left without being spotted.”
“He didn’t leave,” answered Lara. “He kept a diary, so we know he was here the whole time, but that doesn’t mean that the Amulet didn’t leave.”
“You’re reaching,” said Mason firmly. “It’s somewhere in Khartoum.”
“Maybe,” she admitted. “I’m just pointing out that he could have sent it away with a trusted aide—probably a Sudanese, since any of the British he was here to save would be too easy to spot.”
“He could have done a lot of things,” said Mason. “You’re making it too complex. The answer is right here in Khartoum.”
“Perhaps,” she said. “I’m just trying to be thorough, and to see the city—and the enemy, and the world—as Gordon himself would have seen them.”
“What I can’t figure out is why he didn’t use the damned thing,” said Mason. “Once he had it, why didn’t he turn its power on the Mahdi? How could he make himself part with it?”
“You’re forgetting his nature,” answered Lara. “He was a devout Christian, and he